I know that weedyacres did this. It is talked about a little bit in the attached thread, but she might have some more to share with you. They were DIYers.

Here is a link that might be useful: Discussion including recessed fridge

Thanks for the replies so far! I want to recess it into the wall, but not stick out into the adjacent room.

Rollie,
what do you mean being a 1/4 inch off....width ways do you mean? I know I will have to level the floor behind it.

Not sure if this is what you are looking for - but we had a drywall alcove bulit for our fridge. This is from 17 years ago when the house was built - fridge sits recessed in the alcove - actually sits further back than shown on the pic. Of course now the firdge has changed and we are looking to re-do cabinets, counters, range

{{gwi:1587755}}

My Mother in law had the exact same issue you are describing when she bought a new refrigerator. My FIL recessed the refrigerator just the depth of the wall. He cut the studs, installed a header over the opening, put a 1x4 where the drywall was seamed on the backside. Then he dry walled the opening. This made a 3 inch pocket. It Made a huge difference in the function of that whole area. He fussed and said it couldn't be done but my DH (his son) convinced him. It was a relatively simple process.

Here's a not very good picture of my recessed refrigerator. The "hole" for the refridgerator is the size specified by the manufacturer (KA). However, there is a bigger gap than I think necessary between the top of the refrigerator and the cabinet above it. We are either going to paint the bottom of the cabinet above the refrigerator a dark color or else add a trim strip to the bottom of that cabinet to cover the gap. Good luck.

Here is a link that might be useful: our recessed refrig

Here's picture of our refrigerator from the side--it is flush with the other cabinets.

Here is a link that might be useful: side view

caunckgal.

Like mentioned above, over height, is OK, because the gap is usally covered by the refrigerator cabinet above.

Width is critical, and very dependent on your exact cabinet layout. I never make an opening any less than 36 1/4 wide (finished) even if the fridge is 35 5/8. You cannot simply say that I am going to add 1/2" drywall to the opening, so I will make the rough opening 1 inch wider. There are other factors to consider, mainly adding the corner bead, which will decrease the opening by another 1/8 to 1/4" depending on how straight it is installed.

Building it over width, can also be detrimental if you dont have tall ref cabinet panels along side the fridge, because then you can see the gap beside the fridge.

It is well worth the expense to do, because as mentioned above, even a 3 " gap will make a considerable difference. You also need to remember, that the fridge ( no matter how deep it is) will naturally sit a couple inches away, for the electrical connection and room for the water lines.

We had it done after all the cabinets were already installed so it took a bit of effort to move the fridge out of the location and work in the confined space to cut out a hole into the drywall. So doing it ahead of time will safe you alot of time!

The biggest issue is to be sure that there is nothing major hidden in that wall. If there's plumbing it would be a huge amount of work to move the plumbing ... In our case we found a pipe for the vacu-flow system. But that one is very small in diametre so we pushed the fridge right against that pipe and still gained enough space so the fridge isn't sticking out too much anymore.

Canuck:
I don´t know that I have much to add other than what´s in the linked post above, but in case you don´t want to sort through the whole post, here´s a few photos of the ¨hole in the wall¨. We backed onto a stair well, so just left it open. I don´t think you can make it completely flush with the cabinets just backing into it by a 2x4 distance, but it would sure help.